30 CANARY BIRDS. 



The mention of haws puts me in mind that there is a total 

 failure of that wild fruit, so conducive to the support of many 

 of the winged nation. For the same severe weather, late in 

 the spring, which cut off all the produce of the more tender 

 and curious trees, destroyed also that of the more hardy and 

 common. 



Some birds, haunting with the missel-thrushes, and feeding 

 on the berries of the yew-tree, which answered to the descrip- 

 tion of the merula torquata, or ringousel, were lately seen in 

 this neighbourhood. I employed some people to procure me 

 a specimen, but without success. 



Query Might not Canary birds be naturalized to this 

 climate, provided their eggs were put, in the spring, into the 

 nests of some of their congeners, as gold-finches, green-finches, 

 &c. ? Before winter, perhaps, they might be hardened, and able 

 to shift for themselves.* 



About ten years ago, I used to spend some weeks yearly at 

 Sunbury, which is one of those pleasant villages lying on the 

 Thames, near Hampton Court. In the autumn I could not 

 help being much amused with those myriads of the swallow 

 kind which assemble in those parts. But what struck me most 

 was, that, from the time they began to congregate, forsaking 

 the chimneys and houses, they roosted every night in the 

 osierbeds of the aits of that river. Now this resorting towards 

 that element, at that season of the year, seems to give some 

 countenance to the northern opinion (strange as it is) of their 

 retiring under water. A Swedish naturalist is so much 

 persuaded of that fact, that he talks, in his Calendar of Flora, 

 as familiarly of the swallow's going under water in the 

 beginning of September, as he would of his poultry going to 

 roost a little before sunset.f 



various districts of Britain. Mr Selby mentions some having been 

 observed in 1822 ; and one was shot at Edinburgh, in December 1830; 

 another was shot at Coventry ; and, during the years 1829, 1830, and 

 1831, there have been recorded no fewer than twenty specimens, killed 

 in the counties of Suffolk and Norfolk. Er>. 



* Various experiments have been tried to naturalize Canary birds in 

 Britain, but they have all proved abortive. ED. 



f- Our author seems strongly inclined to the doctrine of tJie submersion 

 of the swallow tribe during winter ; but the temperature of places situated 

 at great depths below the surface of the land and water, is sufficient 

 objection to the circumstance of birds remaining in a torpid state, during 

 the winter, in solitary caverns, or at the bottom of deep lakes, as many 

 authors have affirmed. 



It is an established fact, that all places situated eighty feet below the 

 surface of the earth are constantly of the same temperature. In these 



